The ballad is also in the Pepys collection, II, 129, No 113, and there are two copies in the Euing collection, Nos 273, 274.
The following entries occur in the Stationers' Registers:
1564, September or October, William Greffeth licenced to print a book intituled 'The story of Kynge Henry the IIIJth and the Tanner of Tamowthe.' Arber, I, 264.
1586, August 1, Edward White, 'A merie songe of the Kinge and the Tanner.' Arber, II, 451.[foot-note]
1600, October 6, William White, by the consent of Widow Danter, 'A merye, pleasant and delectable history betwene Kinge Edward the IIIJth and a Tanner of Tamworthe,' and, by like consent of the Widow Danter, "the bal[l]ad of the same matter that was printed by her husband John Danter." Arber, III, 173.
1615, December 9, John Trundle, for a ballad of 'The King and the Tanner.' Arber, III, 579.
1624, December 14, Master Pavier, John Wright, and others, a ballad, 'King and Tanner.' Arber, IV, 131.
The ballad mentioned in the entry under the year 1600 is unquestionably our ballad, or an earlier form of it. No copy from the first half of the seventeenth century is known to be preserved. The "delectable history" entered under the same date is extant in an edition of 1596, printed by John Danter, and in one of 1613, printed by William White,[foot-note] The ballad, as we have it, was made by abridging the fifty-six stanzas of the history to thirty-nine, with other changes. The history itself has its predecessor, and, as Ritson remarks, its undoubted original, in 'The King and the Barker,'[foot-note] between which and the history, though the former has come down to us in a sadly mutilated condition, and has been freely treated in the remodelling, there still remain a few verbal correspondences. Several good points are added in the history, and one or two dropped.
'King Edward the Fourth and Tanner of Tamworth,' in Percy's Reliques, 1765, II, 75, was compounded from Danter's history, 1596, and a copy "in one sheet folio, without date, in the Pepys collection."
King Edward, while out a-hunting, sees a tanner coming along the way, and takes a fancy to accost him. Leaving his lords under a tree, he rides forward and asks the tanner the way to Dray ton Basset; the tanner directs him to turn in at the first pair of gallows. The king presses for a civil answer; the tanner bids him be gone; he himself has been riding all day and is fasting. The king promises meat and drink of the best for his company to Drayton Basset; the tanner makes game of the offer, and tries to get away, but in vain. The king now proposes to change his horse for the tanner's mare; the tanner demands a noble to boot, nor shall a cowhide which he is riding on go with the mare. The cowhide thrown on to the king's saddle frightens the horse and the tanner is pitched off; after this he will not keep the horse, but the king in turn exacts a noble to boot. Then the king sounds his horn, and his attendants come riding in; the tanner takes the whole party to be strong thieves, but when he sees the suite fall on their knees he would be glad to be out of the company. 'A collar! a collar!' cries the king (to make the tanner esquire, but this is inadvertently left out in the ballad). 'After a collar comes a halter,' exclaims the unhappy tanner. But the king is graciously pleased to pay for the sport which he has had by conferring on the tanner an estate of three hundred pound a year;[foot-note] in return for which his grateful liegeman engages to give him clouting-leather for his shoon if ever he comes to Tamworth.
Next to adventures of Robin Hood and his men, the most favorite topic in English popular poetry is the chance-encounter of a king, unrecognized as such, with one of his humbler subjects. Even in the Robin Hood cycle we have one of these meetings (in the seventh and eighth fits of the Little Gest), but there the king visits Robin Hood deliberately and in disguise, whereas in the other tales (except the latest) the meeting is accidental.
The most familiar of these tales are 'The King and the Tanner,' and 'The King and the Miller;' the former reaching back beyond the sixteenth century, the latter perhaps not beyond the seventeenth, but modelled upon tales of respectable antiquity, of which there is a specimen from the early years of the thirteenth century.[foot-note]
In the history or "ballad" of 'The King and the Miller,' or, more specifically, 'King Henry Second and the Miller of Mansfield,' the king, while hunting in Sherwood, loses his nobles and is overtaken by night; he meets a miller, and after some colloquy is granted a lodging; is entertained with bag-puddings and apple-pies, to which is added a course of 'light-foot,' a pasty of the king's deer, two or three of which, the miller tells his guest in confidence, he always keeps in store. The nobles recover the king at the miller's the next morning; the miller looks to be hanged when he sees them fall on their knees; the king dubs him knight. The king has relished his night with the miller so much that he determines to have more sport out of him, and commands the attendance of the new knight with his lady and his son Dick at court on St. George's day. The three jet down to the king's hall on their mill-horses. In the course of the dinner the king expresses a wish for some of their light-foot; Dick tells him that it is knavery to eat of it and then betray it. Sir John Cockle and Dick dance with the court-ladies, and the buffoonery ends by the king's making the miller overseer of Sherwood, with a stipend of three hundred pound, to which he attaches an injunction to steal no more deer.[foot-note]
Of the older poems, 'John the Reeve' (910 vv.) may be noticed first, because it has a nearly complete story, and also resemblance in details with 'The King and the Tanner,' or 'The King and the Miller,' which two others of perhaps earlier date have not. 'John the Reeve' is now extant only in the Percy Manuscript (p. 357, Hales and Furnivall, II, 550). Since there had been but three kings of the name of Edward (v. 16), it must have been composed, as Mr. Hales has remarked, between the death of Edward III and the accession of Edward IV, 1376-1461, and forms of language show that the Percy text must be nearer the end than the beginning of this period.[foot-note]
Edward Longshanks, while hunting, is separated from all his train but a bishop and an earl. Night comes on, and they know not where they are, and the weather is cold and rough. As they stand considering which way to turn, a stout carl rides by; they beg him to take them to some harbor. The fellow will at first have nothing to do with them, but finally shows a disposition to be accommodating if they will swear to do him no harm; all that he can promise them, however, is beef and bread, bacon a year old, and sour ale; as for a good fire, which the king would particularly like, they cannot have that, for fuel is dear. They ride on to a town, light at a comely hall, and are taken into a room with a bright fire and candles lighted. The carl, who has already described himself as John the Reeve, husbandman and the king's bondman, inquires of the earl who the long fellow may be, and who the other in the sark: the first, he is told, is Piers, the queen's chief falconer, the other a poor chaplain, and the earl himself a sumpterman. 'Proud lads, and I trow penniless,' is John's comment; he himself, though not so fine, has a thousand pound and more. They move on to the hall, and are civilly received by the goodwife. John marshals the company, now increased by two daughters of the house, and by Hodge and Hob, two neighbors, setting the three strangers and his wife at the head of the table, his daughters farther down, and taking the end himself with his neighbors. Bean-bread, rusty bacon, lean salt beef a year old, and sour ale are brought in, and every one has a mess. The king murmurs, John says, Thou, gettest no other; the king coaxes, John will not give them a morsel unless they swear never to tell of him to Edward. All three pledge their troth, and then come in fine bread, wine red and white, in silver cups, the boar's head, capons, venison, everything that king could have or crave. After the supper, John, Hob, and Hodge perform a rustic dance; King Edward (who gets his shins kicked) never had so merry a night. In the morning they hear mass and eat a good breakfast, for which they promise warison, and then the king takes leave and rides to Windsor. The lords have a good story to tell the queen; she prays the king to send for the reve. John is convinced that he has been beguiled by his guests, but arms himself with such as he has, and, after a huge libation with Hodge and Hob, sets forth. The porter at the palace will not let him in; John knocks him over the crown and rides into the hall. Neither before this nor then will he vail hat or hood. [The passage in which the reve discovers that Piers falconer was the king has dropped out.] John bears himself sturdily; the king can punish him, but the king is honorable and will keep his word, and may remember the promised warison. The king gives thanks for the hot capons and good wine, the queen urges that the reve should be promoted. The king, nothing loath, makes John a gentleman, and gives him his manor, a hundred pound and a tun of wine yearly, then takes a collar and creates him knight. John blenches a little at the collar; he has heard that after a collar comes a rope; but he recovers his nerve after supping off a gallon of wine at the table. It is now the bishop's turn to do something; he promises his good offices for John's two sons and two daughters; these, in the end, are well disposed of, and Hodge and Hob are made freemen. John ever after keeps open board for all guests that God sends him.
The tale of Rauf Coilyear,[foot-note] shortly after 1480, has for its personages Charles the Great and a charcoal-burner. Charles, on his way to Paris from St. Thomas, is isolated from his cortege by a fierce storm; night has come on and he is in a strait for shelter. By good luck Rauf makes his appearance, a churl of prodigious inurbanity, but ready to take in any good fellow that is 'will of his way.' Arrived at his house, Rauf calls to his wife to make a fire and kill capons. When supper is dight, the guest is told to give the goodwife his hand and take the head of the table. Charles hangs back; the churl, who has once before criticised his manners, hits him under the ear and sends him sprawling to the floor. There is a plenteous supper, in which venison is not lacking. The carl tells the king that the foresters have threatened to send him to Paris for deer stealing, but he means to have enough for himself and a guest in spite of them. Then after wine they sit by the fire and the collier tells many a tale. Charles is affable; Rauf asks him his name and where he lives; Wymond is his name, and he lives with the queen, in fact, is of her bed-chamber; if Rauf will come to court he shall have the better sale for his fuel. Charles is put to bed in a handsome room, and rises so early that he has to waken his host to take leave. He is urged not to go so soon, but to-morrow is Yule and every officer of the court must be at his post. He wishes to pay the goodwife for her good entertainment; Rauf will not hear of such a thing. Come to court to-morrow, says the king; I want coals myself. Roland and Oliver and a thousand more have been wandering all night in search of their lord, and thank God when they recover him on the road to Paris. Rauf sets out for the court with his coals, according to appointment; the king has him in mind, and sends out Roland to bring in such man as he may meet. Roland finds the collier intractable, and has to return without him. The king is displeased, and Roland is on the point of going again, when he learns from a porter that there is a man with a horse and baskets at the gate who will not be turned away. Rauf is let in; he gives his horse in charge to the porter, and pushes into the hall to find Wymond, and after being shoved about a good deal, gets sight of him, dressed in cloth of gold, and clearly a much greater man than he had called himself; he is daunted by all the splendor; if he could but get away, nothing should bring him to the court again. The king then tells the story of his night at Rauf's, not pretermitting the carl's rough behavior. The lords laugh, the knights are for hanging him; the king thinks he owes better thanks, and dubs Rauf knight, assigns him three hundred a year, and promises him the next fief that falls vacant.[foot-note]
'King Edward Third and the Shepherd,' Manuscript of about 1450, Cambridge University Library, Ff. 5. 48 b, 1090 vv.[foot-note]
The king, while taking his pleasure by a river-side one morning, meets Adam, a shepherd, and engages in talk with him. The shepherd complains of the king's men, who help themselves to his beasts, sheep, hens, and geese, and at best pay with a tally. Edward is concerned for the king's good fame; he is a merchant, but has a son with the queen who can get any boon of her, and the shepherd shall have what is due him. That is four pound two, says Adam, and you shall have seven shillings for your service. It is arranged that the shepherd shall come to court the next day and ask the porter for Joly Robyn. The king is kept a long time by the shepherd's stories, but not too long, for when he is invited to come home and take a bit to eat he accepts with pleasure. They see many a coney, hart, and hind, on their way, and the king tries to put up Adam, who has been bragging of his skill with the sling, to kill a few; but the man, as he says, knows very well the danger of poaching, and never touches anything but wild fowl. Of these they have all sorts at their meal, and two-penny ale. Before they set to drinking, Adam instructs the king in an indispensable form: he that drinks first must call out 'passilodion,' and the respondent 'berafrynd.'Edward praises the dinner, but owns to a hankering for a little game. Can you keep a secret? asks the shepherd; indeed he can. Upon this assurance, Adam fetches pasties of rabbits and deer; of these he is wont to kill more than he himself needs, and sends presents to gentlemen and yeomen, who in return furnish him with bread, ale, and wine. Wine follows: Edward calls 'passilodion;' Adam is ready with 'berafrynd.' The king now takes leave, but before he goes the shepherd shows him a room underground well stored with venison and wine, and they have one draught more. The next day the shepherd goes to court and asks the porter for Joly Robyn. The king has prepared his lords for the visit, and directed them to call him by that name. Adam is paid his four pound two, and offers Robyn the promised seven shillings for his mediation. Robyn will take nothing; he would do much more than that for love; Adam must dine with him, and is placed at the head of a table. The king sends the prince to Adam for a bout of passilodion; Adam says the merchant has betrayed him, and wishes he were out of the place. A squire is now ordered to tell Adam that Joly Robyn is the king. Adam puts down his hood, which up to this time he would do for nobody,[foot-note] falls on his knees, and cries mercy. The rest is wanting, but we may be certain that Adam was knighted and presented with an estate.
'King Edward and the Hermit,' Manuscript Ashmole 6922, of about 1450, a fragment of 522 vv.[foot-note]
The king, hunting in Sherwood, follows a remarkably large deer till he loses himself. By the favor of St. Julian, he discovers a hermitage; he asks quarters for the night; the hermit lives on roots and rinds, and such a lord would starve with him, but he yields to urgency. The guest must take such as he finds, and that is bread and cheese and thin drink. King Edward expresses his surprise that the hermit should not help himself out with the deer; the hermit is much too loyal for that, and besides, the peril is to be considered. Still the king presses for venison; no man shall know of it; the hermit, convinced that he is safe with his company, brings out venison, salt and fresh, and then a four-gallon pot. The king is taught to drink in good form; when one calls 'fusty bandyas,' the other must come in with 'stryke pantere;' and thus they lead holy life. Such cheer deserves requital; if the hermit will come to court, where his guest is living, he has only to ask for Jack Fletcher, and they two will have the best that is there; the 'frere,' though not eager to close with this proposal, says he will venture a visit. To show Jack more of his privity he takes him into his bedroom and gives him a bow to draw; Jack can barely stir the string; the frere hauls to the head an arrow an ell long. Then, wishing that he had a more perfect reliance on Jack's good faith, the hermit exhibits his stock of venison, after which they go back to their drinking, and keep it up till near day. They part in the morning; the king reminds his host of the promised visit, and rides straight for home. His knights, who have been blowing horns for him all night in the forest, are made happy by hearing his bugle, and return to the town. This is all that is preserved, but again we may be confident that King Edward made the hermit an abbot.
That the hermit had some habilitation for such promotion appears from a story told by Giraldus Cambrensis two hundred years be fore the apparent date of any of these poems.[foot-note]
King Henry Second, separated from his men in hunting, came to a Cistercian house at nightfall and was hospitably received, not as king (for this they knew not), but as a knight of the king's house and retinue. After a handsome supper, the abbot asked his help in some business of the fraternity on which he was to visit the king the next day, and this was readily promised. The abbot, to improve his guest's good disposition, had his health drunk in many a cup of choice wine, after the English fashion; but instead of the customary salutation or challenge 'wes heil!'[foot-note] called 'pril!' The king, who would have answered 'drinc heil!' was at a loss how to respond; he was told that 'wril!' was the word. And so with 'pril' and 'wril' they pursued their compotation, monks, freres, guests, servants, deep into the night. The next morning the king rejoined his party, who had been much alarmed at losing him. Order was given that when the abbot came he should be immediately admitted, and it was not long before he made his appearance, with two of his monks. The king received him graciously, all that he asked was granted; the abbot begged leave to retire, but the king carried him off to luncheon and seated him by his side. After a splendid meal, the king, lifting a big cup of gold, called out, 'Pril, father abbot!' The abbot, staggering with shame and fear, begged his grace and forgiveness. The king swore by God's eyes that as they had eaten and drunk together in good fellowship the night before, so should it be to-day; and it should be 'pril' and 'wril' in his house as it had been at the convent. The abbot could not but obey, and stammered out his 'wril,' and then king and abbot, knights and monks, and, at the king's command, everybody in hall and court, kept up unremittingly a merry and uproarious interchange of 'pril' and 'wril.' Of all the four old poems we may repeat what Percy has said of 'John the Reeve,' that "for genuine humor, diverting incidents, and faithful pictures of rustic manners, they are infinitely superior to all that have been since written in imitation," meaning by these the broadside ballads or histories.[foot-note] A brief account of such of these as have not been spoken of (all of very low quality) is the utmost that is called for.
'The Shepherd and the King.'[foot-note] King Alfred, disguised in ragged clothes, meets a shepherd, and all but demands a taste of his scrip and bottle. The shepherd will make him win his dinner, sword and buckler against sheephook. They fight four hours, and the king cries truce; 'there is no sturdier fellow in the land than thou,' says the king; 'nor a lustier roister than thou,' says the shepherd. The shepherd thinks his antagonist at best a ruined prodigal, but offers to take him as his man; Alfred accepts the place, is equipped with sheep-hook, tar-box, and dog, and accompanies his master home. Dame Gillian doubts him to be a cut-throat, and rates him roundly for letting her cake burn as he sits by the fire.[foot-note] Early the next morning Alfred blows his horn, to the consternation of Gill and her husband, who are still abed. A hundred men alight at the door; they have long been looking for their lord. The shepherd expects to be hanged; both he and his wife humbly beg pardon. Alfred gives his master a thousand wethers and pasture ground to feed them, and will change the cottage into a stately hall.
'King James and the Tinker.'[foot-note] King James, while chasing his deer, drops his nobles, and rides to an ale-house in search of new pleasures, finds a tinker there, and sets to drinking with him. The tinker has never seen the king, and wishes he might; James says that if he will get up behind him he shall see the king. The tinker fears that he shall not know the king from his lords; the nobles will all be bare, the king covered. When they come to the greenwood the nobles gather about the king and stand bare; the tinker whispers, 'they are all gallant and gay, which, then, is the king?' 'It must be you or I,' answers James, for the rest are all uncovered. The tinker falls on his knees, beseeching mercy; the king makes him a knight with five hundred a year. (Compare the story of James Fifth of Scotland and John Howieson, Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, ch. 27.)
'The King and the Forester.'[foot-note] King William the Third, forbidden to hunt by a forester who does not recognize him, tries in vain to bribe the man, makes himself known, presents the forester with fifty guineas, and appoints him ranger.
'The Royal Frolick, or, King William and his Nobles' Entertainment at the Farmer's House on his return from the Irish wars.'[foot-note] King William, 'returning to London from Limerick fight,' stops at a farm-house 'for merriment sake,' and asks country cheer for himself and his nobles. The farmer and his wife have gone to the next market-town to see the king pass, and their daughter alone is at home. She serves bacon and eggs, all that she has; the king throws her ten guineas, and one of his lords adds two for loyal sentiments which the girl had expressed. In a Second Part the farmer and his wife, when they return, learn that the king is at their house, are ordered into his presence, and are rewarded for the meal which had been furnished.[foot-note]
'The King and the Cobbler' (a prose his-tory).[foot-note] King Henry Eighth, visiting the watches in the city, makes acquaintance with a cobbler, and is entertained in the cobbler's cellar; invites the cobbler to court, directing him to inquire for Harry Tudor, etc.; settles upon him land in the Strand worth fifty pound a year, which land is to be called Cobler's Acre.
Campbell, West Highland Tales, IV, 142, says that he has a Gaelic tale like 'The Miller of Mansfield.'
A Belgian story of the Emperor Charles Fifth and a broom-maker has all the typical points of the older cycle, and, curiously enough, Charles Fifth instructs the broom-maker to bring a load of his ware to the palace to sell, as Charles the Great does in the case of Rauf Coilyear: Maria von Ploennies, Die Sagen Belgiens, p. 251.
The same collection, p. 246 f., has the story of the man who wished to see the king (an anecdote of Charles Fifth and a peasant). This story turns up again in Thiele's 'Kongen og Bonden,' Danmarks Folkesager, I, 62 (1843). Christian the Fourth, after a long walk, takes a seat in the cart of a countryman who is on his way to the castle. The countryman wishes that he might see the king; the king will be the only man to keep his hat on; the countryman says, It must be you or I.
After the older pattern is this Russian story, Afanasief, VII, 233, No 32 (given me by Professor Wollner). A tsar who has lost himself while hunting passes the night with a deserter in a robbers-hut in a wood. They draw lots who shall stand guard, and the lot falls to the tsar, to whom the soldier gives his side-arms. Notwithstanding many warnings, the tsar dozes on his post, and at last the soldier, first punishing him a little, packs him off to sleep. The robbers come, one by one, and are shot by the soldier. The next day the deserter shows the tsar his road, and afterwards pays the tsar a visit at court, discovers who his comrade was, and is made general.
The Emperor Maximilian Second, while walking in a wood, comes upon a charcoal-burner; they have a talk, and the emperor is invited to share the man's dumplings. Maximilian asks the charcoal-burner to pay him a visit when he comes to the city, lets him see the princes and the empress, and gives him a luncheon. There is no éclaircissement at the time. In the end the charcoal-burner and his family are employed in the imperial garden.[foot-note]
Robert Dodsley made a very pleasing little sentimental drama out of 'The King and the Miller of Mansfield ' (1737), and from this play (perhaps through a translation, 'Le Roi et le Meunier,' made before 1756), Sédaine took the substance of 'Le Roi et le Fermier,' 1762, and Collé the idea of 'La Partie de Chasse de Henri IV, 1774.' Goldoni's musical drama, 'Il re alia caccia'King Henry IV of England), produced a year after Sédaine's play, seems to have been suggested by it: vol. 37 of the edition of Venice, 1794.
Percy's ballad is translated by Bodmer, I, 172.
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